[Update 1] Blogging from the Illinois Community Technology Conference.

Yesterday and today I've been at two one-day conferences here in Springfield, Illinois. Speaking about the Community Wireless Emergency Response Initiative, public policy, broadband and community Internet projects. Meeting up with a number of great folks and having great conversations with folks: Gaston from the Illinois Department of Human Services, Jim and Brad from Heartland Communications, Steven from the Lt. Gov's Office, Bruce from SimDesk, Andy from the Digital Workforce Education Society, Bob from Net2Community, Michael from the Association for Community Networks, Layton from Midwest Technology Access Group, and many others.

The Illinois Community Technology Conference is an interesting mix of policy-makers and practitioners. Though the sessions themselves are a bit dry (and the presenters guarded in their analyses), the after-the-public presentation discussions have been fascinating. In many ways, if you want to get a feel for how state-level broadband policies and initiatives are developed and launched, find your state's equivalent of these sorts of discussions. It's one of the few places where one can get "quality time" with decision-makers without the marketing hype of industry mouth-pieces and sock puppets.

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Listening to a representative from the Illinois Commerce Commission talk about the strategies and hopes for creating low-cost, ubiquitous, accessible broadband coverage, the crowd grew restless. Here at the "Connecting the e to Rural Illinois" conference, participants' realities diverging so dramatically from what was being presented as a "competitive, low-cost" broadband environment, that the disconnect was quite palpable.

The speaker took questions, and I was given the last one. I spoke briefly about the massive problems inherent in the FCC's definition of "competitive" broadband service areas (upon which state "competition" rates are based); that historically, AT&T's profits were capped at a 7.5% rate of return (Illinois now allows 9-15% rates of return in the few areas still considered "non-competitive"); that while it was great to cite Ronald Reagan as leading the deregulation charge, he also broke up AT&T to foster competition; that conglomerization in broadband service provision is at unprecedented levels today (I should have mentioned that prices per megabit in the US are orders of magnitude higher than in many other countries); and that over the last 5 years, the US has been falling further and further behind in broadband penetration rates, so comparing Illinois with this dismal national average provides a false sense of progress... somehow managed to cram this into a fairly brief statement, and then my question, "Given that reality diverges so dramatically from the ICC's 'hopes' -- when do you create new theories to meet these facts?" And the audience clapped to hear the question -- which is an indicator of the high level of resonance participants have for these concerns.